Then silence again, his hearers being too much accustomed to the intricacies of Donald's style to be startled by this novel fact in natural history. So, amid the stillness, a sudden jerk of the Reverend James's right hand, a pause of intense expectation--to judge by the rapt look on his comely face--then disappointment from bow to stern, and a general slackness. "It will just be ain o' they pickers," mused Donald, recovering from his momentary idleness; "or maybe a sooker. It iss the pickers and sookers in this place that just beats all. Oo-aye! If it wass not a picker, it will be a sooker." "What is the difference between a picker and a sucker, Donald?" asked Marjory, severely practical. "'Deed, then, Miss Marjory, and it iss not any difference there will be between them at all. It is a sooker that will not be caring a tamn for the hook, and it is the picker that will not be caring a tamn either." "Ahem!" interrupted Mr. Gillespie, with reproachful glance at Donald's unconscious back; "I believe, Miss Marjory, that pickers or suckers is really only the local name for young codlings, lythe, or cuddies. In fact, for all young fish." "She is not them at all," retorted Donald, scornfully. "It iss sookers and pickers, and not young fish they will be, and it iss not a local name, whatever." The last came with such a glance of sovereign contempt for the offender, that Paul, from his ballast kegs, smiled up at Marjory, who smiled back at him. "Got him at last! and a good one too!" sang out Will, ending the discussion by a new topic of all-absorbing interest, which held the boat's crew in suspense till the rasping rub of the line over the side and the drip of water falling back on water ceased in a disgusted exclamation from the captor of a small flounder, hooked foul. "Little deevil," murmured John Macpherson, in such a self-communing tone, that the Reverend James felt the observation must pass. "It iss pulling like that they are," commented Donald, affably. "John Roy he was fishin' at the ferry-house, and thinkin' it wass a _skatach_ he got, and cryin' on me for the gaff he wass, but it was two flukies he was hookin' by their tails." Marjory looked as if she were inclined to dispute the fact, then joined in the dreamful silence, which, with spasmodic awakenings as fish after fish came over the side, lasted until there was enough bait, and Will gave the word to move on. Then the anchor came up laden with a root of oarweed, in which strange shells and starfish lay entangled; so it was handed aft for Marjory to see. "It is squeakin' like a mice yon beast will be," said Donald, pointing to a sea-urchin. "Aye! an' bitin' most tarrible he is." "That is quite impossible," interrupted the girl, cutting short various other facts which trembled on Donald's lips. "They couldn't bite if they tried."